Henrik entered the close green environs of his ground-floor unit’s yard
with a Balloon Time helium tank kit jacked up on his good shoulder. He kept
the outdoor space free of anything that needed tending to, preferring flat
grass, waist-high hedge boarders and no furnishings. A second balloon kit
remained unopened in his bedroom with the other equipment he had bought at
the hardware store. The red-aproned salesgirl (as well as the box itself)
boasted of the set’s essentialness for any celebration, going so far as to
call it a party no-brainer. It came with three tester balloons in
the secondary colors; additional balloons sold separately, a suggestion
Henrik had declined.

To the credit of the box’s declarations, he easily filled the orange
balloon. Letting it expand in his hand until it became the size of a heart,
then a head, he knotted it shut and let it go. It started to float away
like runaway citrus before he snatched it, slid open the glass doors with
the rubber tip of his sneaker and tossed it inside the living room.
Levitating on its side, the balloon wedged itself into a ceiling corner,
barricaded by a sprinkler spigot. Some people liked the way escaped plastic
bags danced in the parking lot, but not Henrik. He didn’t want to dirty up
some tree or beach where the skin of the broken balloon would invariably
wind up. So he brought the ugliness inside. It looked like a portly little
sun now, but in a few days that balloon would be nothing but trash.

His doorbell rang. Peering in through a beveled side window, a tired and
rumpled-looking woman hunched and surveyed. Henrik opened the door letting
in a breeze colder than the sun’s brightness would have you believe. The
woman, to Henrik’s surprise, was more kempt and spry than she looked
through the privacy glass. She looked well-rested and eager, dressed in a
beige skirt and a matching loose-fitting blazer. Lifting the glasses
necklaced around her throat, she positioned a small sweat-worn index card
and read from it. “Henrik?”

“Yes. You must be Sally.”

“I had hoped Bill would make it too. He’s the pro. I’ve never counseled for
the Society alone.” She smiled apologetically and extended her hand for a
shake with the card still cupped inside. The unfamiliar friction of an
obstructed handshake, like the dullest sandpaper on soft wood, froze the
inexperienced Sally. She waited for Henrik to direct her deeper into the
apartment, excusing her faux pas. He released his grip and made sure the
card stayed with her and joked, “I’m sure Bill does that all the time. Good
thing he’s not here.”

She followed him a few steps into the living room nook where a
Floridian-printed sectional couch waited for them. She pulled out a folder
from her tote bag an observed the status of Henrik’s home. Sally’s direct
view was of the stuck orange balloon. “I see you have purchased the kits.
Do you have the vinyl tubing? And the hood?”

“Yes. I got a turkey bag for the hood. You know the ones where you cook it
inside and the bird stays juicy?”

“That should work. Strong enough to withstand heat so….”

From the kitchenette, a few feet away, Henrik put on a percolator pot of
coffee. He pulled from a high cupboard the box of turkey bags to show to
Sally. Yellow and full, the innocent box was ready for inspection, “Do you
need to clear these with Bill?”

Sally’s hands in surrender, “I can’t touch the box, you’ll remember from
your readings. Not until cleanup time. You’ll have to do everything on your
own until you’ve expired. Then of course you can’t do anything. You do
understand that and are comfortable with that?” She spoke as if the bags
were a virus or a grenade. Their movements circulated the air enough to
prod at the balloon. It shimmied, but remained stuck, dancing alone in a
corner.

“Sorry, I forgot myself. I remember.” He lowered the bags and backed away,
assuring he meant no harm. He’d return the box to the kitchen, get the
coffee and leave this woman to decompress. He considered the
appropriateness of hugging her, to calm them both down. Would that leave
fingerprints too? And her hair! Would the strands that would wend their way
into his sweater put her at risk for prosecution?

Sally raised her voice slightly since Henrik’s head was turned, selecting
mugs for the tray, “You’ll need to check the size. Not to be crass, if they
will fit a turkey, they will fit your head.” Henrik placed the tray on the
table between them, the black surfaces of the coffee looked like the
deepest grottos he could dive into and disappear. The smell was
otherworldly and lusty, making even the daintiest cups deep enough to drown
in. Sally asked if he had set a date for his liberation and Henrik replied
he was hoping to make arrangements with his daughter, but that it would be
soon, best after the holidays into the new year.

Sally whispered over the edge of her cup, as if to tame the steaming liquid
from its heat. “My husband had colon cancer. It was a nightmare. I was so
glad to see him released. He did helium too. Asleep in forty-five seconds.”

***

Curled like a volute at the end of a handrail, Petra’s dog sunned in the
valley of a vinyl desk chair. Licorice, little and black with an aging gray
face—the suspected runt of the litter—didn’t budge when Petra loomed near.
The dog looked up at her owner with black-moon eyes and an expression that
betrayed nothing but familiarity with Petra’s presence. More respect than
love. That regard never translated into learning that the chair was
Petra’s, not hers. Whether it was dim-wittedness or entitlement, Petra
could never tell and she made no effort to positively-reinforce otherwise.
There was never any change in behavior.

With a two-handed scoop, Petra felt the warm pocket of Licorice’s front
legs; her grip pulsated from the dog’s heartbeat. There’s so much life, so
much chaos, inside such a little thing that sits still all day and does
nothing. Petra took her rightful seat as Licorice burrowed into the hollow
of Petra’s thighs and—after several attempts—rolled into a C-shape. She
remained that way as Petra checked emails and arranged a list of who would
need to be called back, but as soon as the doorbell trilled there was life
again. Out the window, Petra saw the brown van at the lip of the curb. As
the driver trotted back to the vehicle, Licorice serenaded him with bared
taupe teeth and verbal warnings. Get off my land! There’s that
protective warrior she’d seen in the pound, hiding her puppies from those
who dared march passed her gates.

“Too late, Lic. He got away.”

***

Downstairs, while Petra scanned the counter for a knife to open the
package, she boiled water for tea. She draped a bag of peppermint into an
empty Pennsylvania mug, a souvenir purchase destined to be passed over at a
garage sale, but PA were her initials and the shortest of words, some
children’s first intentional sound. She had found herself hooking the
handle and walking it up to the counter along with a bag of dry Purina and
a tube of tennis balls. She was on her way to the pound in Bird-in-Hand,
where she was growled at by a Hurricane Katrina dog that she’d eventually
chose and name not all that creatively from the shade of her black coat.

The kettle was not yet whistling, but it was an angry sea inside, water
tumbling over itself, frantically morphing into steam. She sliced open the
flaps of the delivery with a butter knife. The water was ready, hissing and
shrieking. It bubbled as she poured it over the bag of peppermint. The
steeping tea settled itself, turning a translucent green, silent in the
mug. Her phone vibrated crawling over the counter top. A call from Mother Home. She silenced the call.

The box had been light, carrying it in from the porch, almost comically
empty, like a bad prank: someone sending you a box full of air. Inside sat
a collapsed plastic bag loosely knotted shut. Putting down her mug, Petra
worked open the closure. She saw a heap of warm-colored yarn. Hats. Pulling
out each one, she counted six, all different sizes, some small enough for a
child. A glowing-fireplace palate, with the blue of the flame represented
in the smallest hat. She tried on a red beanie with ochre dots, like
splashes of spices cascading down to the rolled up brim. Petra hadn’t a
clue as to who had sent them.

Searching for further clues, under the crinkled bag she exhumed a note in
wide and legible cursive. She looked to the return address. Henrik Appel.
It was her last name attached to an unfamiliar given name. But she had
heard the name a few times, it being her father’s. There was one time on
her grandmother’s deathbed, and another occasion when she was eight and
boarding a plane in Mexico to return to the States. She’d never seen it in
print before, that ghost of a name. Spooked, she sipped her tea and burned
her tongue just enough to take her mind off of the note, the name, the box.

Licorice sensed a shift in the room and barked once. Her phone buzzed. Her
mother again, but Petra needed a moment. For her own sake, and for
Licorice’s, she turned on some Wagner. The first part of the Ring Cycle
conducted by Pierre Boulez himself. That would hold the dog in calm stasis,
the mutt being so much like the music, an unemotional shell sheathing a
hurricane. She kneeled down to pet Licorice’s head, pulling the skin on her
face back tight, opening her eyes as far as they would go. Poor kid, Petra
thought, carted and shipped in eighteen-wheelers up the Eastern seaboard.
This little hurricane dog: the storm was held within the muscles of her
sleek midnight body, almost blue in the morning light.

She picked up the note again.

*

Petra, Looking you up, I only found one you. I’m proud of what you’ve
become even if I don’t know what a publicist is. You’ve exceeded
anything I could be. I hope you are well and I hope I can see you
before it’s too late. I’m not long for this world and would like you to
come visit me. I only live a short ride from you, isn’t that funny?

*

Petra, stuck on the word funny, tried to decipher its intent. She had
laughed, a quick burst like an opening of a soda pop. She looked for the
joke that made her chuckle and found none. Leaning rather towards peculiar, Petra eyeballed the rest of the note, which included an
address with landmark directions, the four numbers indicating the next
year, and the salutation, “Love, Dad.” She had found no explanation why the
note came nestled in a box of hats crudely wrapped in a plastic bag.

A noise from her phone alerted Petra to a text message. Her mother: I called and you didn’t answer. This was not the way mornings
usually went. Petra felt hungry and didn’t know if she could let her
absentee father or a forced chat with her mother—or whatever those two
strings knotted together became—enter the space in her head if she didn’t
have something toasted and warm to fill her stomach. She would call her
back later.

The toaster was filled with crumbs. She had never before thought to clean
it. Dampening the sponge, she wrung it out and scrubbed the crumb tray
until it revealed a uniform shine. With the last sheet of paper towel, she
dried the tray off and rebirthed it in the toaster. Untwisting the wire
clasp off a fresh bag, she pulled out one slice of whole wheat, shaved a
bit of cheddar off a block and dotted it with pickle chips. The atomic
orange glow of the box warmed the space around her and she watched it
toast. The cheese began to melt, the pickles settled deeper into the ooze.
Brown began to scar the skin of the cheddar, a relief map for her teeth to
traverse..

She blew on the grilled cheese until it wasn’t too hot to eat and took a
tentative bite. Her phone rang. Her mother again. Petra not yet sated (her
stomach’s emptiness feeling like abuse) she consumed the sandwich rapidly
with little soothing. The toaster still blushed with heat. She opened it
again and touched her left palm to the coils. Her skin burned. A few
seconds later, the sting was too much and her fingers found her mouth. The
phone stopped ringing.

Plunging her hand like pincers in the ice tray, she reached for paper
towels but only the bare roll stood. Her hand throbbed from burn and naked
ice. Licorice, panicky, stayed with Wagner and his raging Gods to guard the
top of the steps. Petra huffed and disappeared down the basement stairs.
Would it be so bad to tell her mother about the note, Petra thought. Or was
it not the act of revealing rather what comes after that was the problem?
How much cleaning up would there be? These things were messy. She climbed
back up the stairs with a roll of Bounty in her good hand to the dog’s
hind-leg stance. Ice tossed in the sink rumbled, as the God of Thunder
baritoned from the player. Petra ripped plastic packaging with her uneven
bite. She placed some fresh ice in thick squares of towel. While her phone
had stopped its tune, it still waited expectantly as did Licorice, who
wanted back in the cave of Petra’s lap.

Calling her mother back meant she had to tell her, maybe even recite the
note from her father. Her mother hadn’t spoken to Henrik in decades. And if
she decided to spill, Petra couldn’t dance around it. They’d have to have a
conversation—adult to adult—and Petra could not see her the way she often
saw her; scattered limbs randomly arranged around a static trunk. Petra’s
father contacted her for the first time in her thirty years with a curious
tone. She might need her mother’s help.

Sometimes, Petra would look at an old photo album she managed to smuggle
away from her mom’s house around the time she was finishing college. Petra
had fished it out of a pile in the attic and stuffed it under her
sweatshirt until she could stow it in her overnight bag. With a tug, she’d
open the puce-colored cover, browns and reds marbling together. It seemed
to Petra like the album was a live action comic book, familiar characters
in an otherworldly place. They were all shots of her parents, when they
were young and there were no rings and no Petra. Her long-haired mother and
her bearded father both smiled upstage of a birthday cake. Her mother’s
blue-shadowed eyes fluttered shut, stuffing a Waldbaum’s bag full of
frosting-smeared paper plates, as the party must have come to a close. Her
father played a silver harmonica while others clapped, pull-tab beer cans
raised in salute. The other people were strangers to her and she wondered
if her mother still knew who they were. She wondered if her mother had
noticed the album had gone missing. Her mother kept a lot close to the
chest.

***

After excavating a tub of Vaseline from under the bathroom sink, opening it
up with her good hand and the assistance of her clasped feet, Petra
lathered a coat of jelly over her blistering raw palm. Where her knuckles
were, appeared stripes of unburned, pale flesh. She filled the dog’s bowl
with water, Licorice appearing from around the bend, lapping up the cool
liquid. Her nametag clanged, dipping itself into the water like a tea bag.
She would have to call her mother back.

It rang three times. Petra anticipated the pick up of voicemail but then
heard a clattering and a resigned, “Oh, hello.”

“Hey, mother. How are you? I saw you called. And texted.”

“Yeah. Just want to see. Ya know. I bought some meat on sale.”

“Was it good?”

“I’ve had better.”

Petra agreed, as it was a familiar refrain, one of her mother’s greatest
hits. An idea that somehow everything was better in the past, and
everything retroactively was the past. If in the near future, Petra asks
her mother how that meat she bought on sale was, her mother will
complement it as a treasure, a rare find. Even as she will take a ravenous
bite off a thick fatty pork chop that Petra will treat her to, she will
fondly spend that future moment reminiscing about that meat she bought on sale’s leanness, its juiciness and its
rosette-pink color.

On the counter, untouched by her injured hand, another conduit of the past
stared at her. Henrik’s scripted letter. She didn’t know what it would mean
to her mother but for Petra, it was a ticket to an unclear destination.
From a ruinous reunion to a perfectly healed family unit, an
acknowledgement of the letter could leave her anywhere on the map, most
likely at the bottom of the ocean. As she hung on the phone with some
seconds of dead air, she understood she was now a middleman between her
mother and father. That regardless of what he had written, he had written
to her and not her mother, the person whom he had known. It felt unfair.

“I thought you might be out with Ray since you didn’t answer my calls.”

“I was trying to work.” Petra looked down at the differences between her
hands. One was on fire and the other was blank. Petra couldn’t stop one
tear from jumping out of her eye. “Ray and I spent a lot of time together
this weekend.”

“Oh?”

Sometimes when talking to her mother, Petra would story-tell. One day, she
told her mom she met a guy while out walking Licorice and they were going
to go out on a date. There was a grain of truth to Petra’s story. She had
met her neighbor Ray while she was out walking the dog; there was just
never a date. She was pretty sure he was married. Petra had walked her
street a few blocks, down the hill and passed the traffic circle. She had
been heading towards the creek. Ray had been running up the hill,
hatchet-chopping at pebbles with his sneakers, as if his each step nicked
the bark of an oak. Out of breath, sweat tie-dyed his John Hopkins med
school t-shirt, he slowed down before her, happy to have a reason to stop.
He introduced himself with a panting tumescence, as did Licorice. Petra
asked if he was a doctor and he said yes, quipping that he had left his
stethoscope at home. He smiled at his own joke, letting her do the
laughing. He smelled malty and radiated heat. Licorice tugged for attention
and need of movement. Petra said it was nice to meet him, but she really
had to walk her dog. As she walked down the hill, it felt like he might
have watched her a bit before he started his run again. She felt like a hot
dog kept under a heat lamp, and the sun was behind clouds; that fevered
beam of heat was either from Ray or from inside herself. It was the only
time they had ever spoken.

Ray became something they could talk about when they had nothing else to
say or if they wanted to avoid anything too controversial between them.
“Ray and I went to a birthday party yesterday.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, it was a friend of his. An old friend.”

“How was the food?”

“Mother, do you always have to ask me about the food? I don’t know, it was
fine I guess. A grocery store cake.”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with that.” Petra heard the applause from a
television show decrescendo. Her mother wanted to hear more.

“They played some oldies, probably your music. Ray took out this harmonica.
He had it in his back pocket like he carries it around all the time.”

“Sounds like a real blues man.”

“That’s what they were playing. The blues.” Petra hummed a song she knew
her mother had heard before. One she would sing along with when it came on
the car radio, on her mother’s favorite station, the one pre-set and easily
found by pushing the first button with her acrylic nails.

“Well, it sounded like you had fun at the party.”

Her mother’s sentence felt like the conversation’s closer. Petra’s hand
ached; she needed help. She didn’t mention her agony to her mother, nor did
she bring up the note. There was no way to get there. She let them both
stay in that little album, covered and stuck closed. By crafting a tale of
a night, one that belonged to her mother, but claiming it as her own, Petra
felt she wasn’t lying, just telling someone else’s truth. Was her mother
picturing the night she spent celebrating her father’s birthday? She
reckoned that when the call ended her mother might head up to the attic,
pulling down the duct-taped string that sent down the ladder. She’d climb,
clacking her wooden soled flip-flops, supposedly better for aging feet.
She’d search in piles and boxes and shelves for that photo album that Petra
had taken. And when she couldn’t find the album, what would she do? Just
straighten up the piles she messed and take an old tissue from her pocket
to dust off the covers. Take an inventory of all the useless things that
could be trashed, hobble back down the ladder and close the door tight.

***

Ray unpacked two upright brown paper bags. Out came fresh sweet and white
potatoes, Brussels sprouts, rainbow carrots, a locally raised chicken. A
turkey was too big for only him and Karen. Vidalia onions, celery, a
disposable baking tin. Let drippings coat the layers of produce he’ll bury
underneath that plump bird. Let them turn brown and crisp with the sweat of
his ample hometown chicken. A little fat wouldn’t kill them. Ray had been
jogging. After his suspension, he was bloated, up over two-fifty. And as he
had gained, Karen lost. She was thin as a wishbone, legs like the stems of
a double cherry. But he was home now.

Ray’s co-workers knew he was a “problem doctor.” His malpractice insurance
was taxed; a dozen cases open at any time. Nurses switched shifts to avoid
him. But that wasn’t enough to confront him about his issues, the culture
of his hospital being: see something, say nothing. His wife even once
approached the Chief of Staff, “Ray always smells of vodka. Vodka’s not
supposed to have a smell I’ve always heard, so why does he always smell
like it?” The Chief had told her she thought the story was that vodka
caused no hangover, not that it was odorless. Karen had gone on to tell her
Ray had claimed his boozy odor was because nurses would leave open alcohol
pads, like the kind you swab on a patient before an injection, on his
counters. “The air is pure alcohol at the hospital, Karen, were trying not
to spread diseases.”

But his behavior couldn’t be ignored when, at a Friday morning Morbidity
and Morality conference, Ray punched out an unusually polite Mid-Western
blood specialist. Dr. Stiv Ogilvie had vituperated on Ray’s unschooled
choices after the death of a patient. Ray retorted that the patient had
been terminal and that the same had happened to Ogilvie not to mention
every other doctor present many times over. “What’s the point of these
pointless meetings? Going over and over about someone dying and why they
died and we know they are going to die! They are sick! In the hospital. End
of story.”

Ogilvie, a former high school wrestler, albeit an unsuccessful one, puffed
out like a rooster, stuttering over his words, “The thing is, my
patients…I’ve witnessed them die. I’ve managed to be sober.” That’s when
the left hook landed on Stiv Ogilvie’s already crooked nose. Ray tried for
another swipe, but unsteady on his feet, he slipped from the stage onto the
velour stadium seating of the front row.

After that incident, Ray was sent to Colorado for assessment from a
specialist who deals with erratic doctors. It saved his job, but his
license had been temporarily suspended. “Dr. Ray Peet cannot practice with
reasonable skill and safety at this time.”

So now he cooked. And Karen, still a stick, sometimes ate a plate in her
library as she worked on her vision boards. Ray ate most of what he made,
but he had begun a regimen of jogging, so he felt it all evened out.

He removed the chicken from its packaging for the test run. After rinsing
it off and patting it dry with paper towels mittened around his hands, he
salted the skin of the chicken, then peppered from the crank of an old
wooden grinder. As he rubbed the seasoning in, Ray felt the flesh
surrounding the bones. He felt how every section was connected through
cartilage and skin and meat. He was a doctor still. He sharpened his knife,
a top tier purchase made with the bounty of all his billable hours. The
more patients he had seen, the more money he had made. The accounts grew
like a fairy tale beanstalks. The only thing to do was to buy toys for
themselves. They were their own children.

With the knife he separated the chicken into all its identifiable parts.
The adipose breasts, the sinewy legs, the useless all-bone wings. Each part
was tossed on the island and accounted for. Ray examined the bones and
assessed the carcasses’ chances for survival. If Stiv Ogilvie and his other
colleagues were with him, aprons layered over their cotton scrubs, they
could soberly discuss the bird’s demise. They would confidently riff on
modes of solution, marking up Dr. and Mrs. Peet’s little used,
landline-adjacent white board. They’d squawk pragmatic words like prevention, diagnostic and characteristics and Ray would
speak his clearheaded thoughts. Hatching a plan to the other’s
exasperation, they would think, there he goes again, trying to prove the rules don’t apply to him,
but Ray’s idea would levitate above the others. Ray would put the amputated
bird back together.

He needed to keep his sewing skills sharp; his muscle memory atrophying.
When not jogging or cooking, he’d recline on shaker furniture to look at
the green and blue bottles fancying the windowsills. The living room had
transformed itself into an antiques store. Compelled to buy them at garage
sales and mildewed country stores, for years he collected the trove of
hand-blown glass. He’d stare at them, imagining the long-ago consumed
spirits still within.

Getting a thick needle and surgical thread, he started to sew the chicken.
He imagined fusing joints and bones and brought the flaps of dimpled skin
together, in and out in a choreographed rhythm. He conjured up the music of
the surgical theater’s PA system—sambas sweating with percussion and
bass—something he could shake his hips and tap his toes to while keeping
his hands steady. The chicken’s thigh connected under the breast. The legs
sewn at an angle to accommodate the thighs. The thread was thickset and
fibrous, yet thin enough to blend in with the texture of the planet-surface
skin. It was an exquisite job, Frankenstein poultry, as if it was fresh out
of the package. If he had feathers, Ray would give the bird back its
plume—same with a head—resuscitating it to real life. Ray wasn’t sure if he
could bring himself to cook it. He gave it a seat in the tin and brought
the tray in with him to sit and watch the bottles.

***

Petra climbed her neighbor’s steps, letting Licorice lead in protective
formation towards the portal of the unfamiliar house. She knocked, Licorice
barked and too quickly—as if he was waiting for her—Ray answered, gripping
a chicken in a disposable silver baking dish against his hip.

“Weird, I was walking by the door and the bark, it was like I was in
trouble. Like the police...” Ray would have gone on talking if Petra hadn’t
been wet cheeked and florid. She presented her hand, burned and dressed
with a film of emollient. “Is that Vaseline? You know that makes it worse
right? Come in, I’ll get a towel and some bandages.”

Petra followed Ray and Licorice inside as the orange light turned to the
aquamarine of sea glass. She felt like she was walking under water,
hallucinating another world. There were bottles everywhere. It was November
outside and the dead of winter within. Ray deposited the chicken on a
coffee table in the living room and Licorice whimpered at the body, as if
warning its ghost not to rise from its coffin. Petra’s hand swelled with
discomfort, all her blood traveled to the damaged extremity, making her
lightheaded.

Petra noticed small pieces of something on the floor. Because of the
oceanic light, she thought it was sand, small shells or pebble-like beads,
but it was paper. In different colors and shapes, confetti-like shards
littered the carpet. She followed the trail to a back room that might have
been a garage once. There was a blonde teak table, plateaus of magazines
bordering the edges. X-acto knives and scissors weighed down several piles
of torn glossy images.

On an easel sat a thick poster board glued with pictures and words. The
images were bright, rosy, and hopeful; an incomplete vision board, the
lower right hand quadrant still blank. Petra got closer to observe freckled
children toting balloons and running on a beach, helmeted bikers orgasming
up a hill, picnickers forgoing a curated table of cakes and pies to throw
newly fallen leaves at each other. They were smiling, sure, Petra expected
that from a vision board, but what struck her is that all the people were
in motion, all captured in random acts of exhilaration. As if to be happy,
you can never sit still.

Ray searched for her with fistfuls of supplies. There was a brown jug of
hydrogen peroxide, gauze pads, cutlet-colored ace bandages and an ice pack
he unloaded next to the towers of periodicals. Sitting down, he took her
hand, assessing the degree of burn and methodically striped away the
Vaseline. Flinching, she found her focus in his profile, sitting in a
dainty task chair, his knees coming up high to accommodate the length of
his legs. They were mountains, like a child would draw. If he had holes in
his jean’s knees, it would look like snow-capped hills rising close to the
clouds.

“Can you take me somewhere? Not far.” Petra asked.

“You don’t need to go to the hospital. The burn’s not deep.”

“Somewhere else. I don’t think I can drive one-handed.”

“I can drive with my knees. One hand for the phone, one for the Egg
McMuffin.” And he smiled like he had when they had run into each other on
the street and introduced themselves. He gave her the space to laugh and
again, she did.

He wrapped her up, letting the elastic of the bandage cling around the
bones and the different shapes they’d make of her hand. It reminded him
most of the chicken’s wing, except Petra had a pulse, rapid from the stress
of her suffering. Since he’d been home, Ray was sharply aware of the daily
absence of other body’s vibrations. Karen wasn’t the affectionate type,
shielding her thinness in quilted clothes and Afghan blankets. In a typical
day at the hospital, his fingers had hunted those comforting signs of life,
his ear drumming to the beat of others. With each consecutive patient,
thousands of dollars worth of pulses and heartbeats thumped for him. During
eighteen-hour shifts, when the beating became too cacophonous, a swig from
a paper cup would slow everything down. He would crave that feeling so much
in the dormitory in Colorado. Even a handshake with his doctor was a
thrill. Now in his house, to replicate the feeling, he would anchor his
finger inside his cheek to feel the pulsations through his fleshy mouth.

Petra father’s note was folded and tucked into her left front pocket. Dark
splotches like algae spotted her pants from each time she had checked that
the slip was still there. She directed Ray to unearth the note, “Do you
mind? My hands.” She held the ice pack against her bandage finally feeling
some numbing relief. Awkwardly—in position, not experience—he inserted his
bent fingers until he felt paper. He lingered on her warmth and the slow
bass line of blood coursing down her limb, more controlled then in her
palm. At that moment, he blushed, embarrassed about the chicken. She was
probably wondering about it and was too polite to ask. That chicken was
only play and no replacement for the real thing. This woman was alive. By
the pounding of her heart that he could feel trough fabric and thigh, a
beautiful rush, like he had some part in keeping her alive. Her face was in
blue shadow; her breath rapid as he opened the note. “You can read it,” she
said as he turned away, reciting its contents out loud to the dog that
until then had no idea what was going on.

***

Henrik never knew what to make for dinner. What happened this day was what
happened most days, he waited until he was ravenous and the sun was already
down (he didn’t drive in the dark) so he slapped some whipped butter on
white bread and quartered an orange. He made the attempt at solo formality
and plated his food. Sucking a bite off the fruit, looking like a cooked
pig, he guzzled a cream soda from a can.

The doorbell rang and he saw the silhouette of a woman through the side
glass. It was Sally, he thought, and he was weary about opening the door to
her again. When she had come to his apartment a few days ago, they had
started off their consultation well. She was demure like Henrik’s teachers
had been in elementary school. She was compassionate and knowledgeable
about the process of liberation, of taking the time of your inevitable
death into your own hands. He knew resolutely, he was making the right
decision and Sally was there for him. Then a little bit of truth comes out
and suddenly the woman was angry. Isn’t that usually the way, he
thought as Sally had seemed to inhale some moxie and clucked at him how
selfish and mocking he was. Henrik stood his ground, and she had left and
said the Society would disavow all knowledge of Henrik Appel. He no longer
existed. He had agreed. That was the whole point.

To see her crawling back, while he was sitting down to feed his belly! That
satisfied Henrik more than his food.

Henrik opened the door to Petra. She kept her bandaged hand inside the
furry wristbands of her frock coat. The porch light was not on yet, he
didn’t get a good look at her but knew this was not who he had expected it
to be. “Oh, I thought you were Sally.”

“No, I’m not Sally.”

He ushered her inside. She appeared staid, like all the Society members he
had met. “Well, I’m sure she’s filled you in on everything,” he called from
the kitchenette as he sliced up an orange for his visitor. He wrapped it in
a napkin and placed on the table for her. He extended his hand (a lefty)
and Petra lifted her bandage as an explanation of rejection. He switched to
his right and she held her father’s hand for the first time. It was cold
from the orange and heavy. A real mitt. He introduced himself and waited
for her name. “Ray,” she answered and lied, but it was also a prayer. The
name was a wish that instead of keeping company with Licorice in the car
outside, Ray was with her, acting her counsel there at the table. She would
be a dog on his lap, curled up and dreaming.

Henrik returned to his seat, “Listen, this doesn’t have to be a problem.”

“Is there a problem?” She had a hard time looking directly at him; afraid
she might see something familiar. She soft-focused on the areas around him,
a basic space, with the exception of a tropical couch devouring much of the
apartment. She saw no evidence of a wife, another child, a roommate or even
a pet. It was an efficiency unit, just what you need and nothing more.

“You tell me if there is a problem. I spoke my peace before. It’s against
the policy, I know, I know, but there will be a time when this country
takes my point seriously. The Scandinavians are good for something you
know. If we can’t be socialists, then let’s be ethical humanists at least.
What did Bill say?”

To Petra, this was like having a conversation with her mother, but only
without the benefit of studying the tape for years and knowing what the
opposing team was going to throw at you. All she had to do was say I’m Petra and this unknown conversation she found herself in would
change course. She could speak her peace. She could tell him that his
absence loomed larger in her life than whatever he could have given her if
he were part of it from the beginning. That whatever love or embarrassment
or confidence could have been showered upon her, what she had now was
bigger. And that’s nothing, thank-you-very-much, a whole galaxy of void.
She could tell him whatever truth she wanted to but something stopped her.
Why should he get more of her than her mother does? Instead, she could play
along and story-tell.

“Bill?” Petra tested the reaction to the name. Henrik hunched over his
plate, head down, eyes up like a bull in a ring. He manically chewed,
perhaps with loose dentures. He looked ready for a fight. “Bill’s not
happy,” Petra taunted.

“I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but you need to know and Bill
needs to know and I tried to tell Sally. I am truly suffering. There’s not
a day when I’m not engulfed in pain. I’m trying to make amends.”

“How are those amends going?”

“I’ve done the usual, you know, I reached out. Apologizing.”

“To whom?”

“I’ll tell you who I sent a three-page letter to. My old boss. All the
things I stole. I can’t believe I never got caught! When I lived in Camden;
pens, tape, toilet paper. All funded by the electric company. I could get
anything out of there. Phones were my specialty.”

“What about your family?”

“My sister doesn’t answer my calls, something about saying something wrong
to her kids, I don’t know, but I sent her a card. Then there’s my daughter.
I don’t know her well.”

“How well?”

“How well does anyone really know anyone? You have kids? It’s not always
easy.”

She was amazed he didn’t know who she was. She thought he might have known
it was her upon opening the door. He had sent out the call. He had
requested her presence and she came but he didn’t realize it was her. He
might have even seen a picture on Facebook. She knew she was one of those
people that always looked different in every picture, like the camera
doesn’t know how to capture her face. “What about your daughter’s mother.
Are you married?”

“Haven’t talked to Petra’s mother in thirty years.” He pronounced her name
with a German, almost soviet lilt. It didn’t even sound like her name to
her.

“Maybe make amends with her?”

“I don’t even know her anymore.” He got up and put his dishes in the sink.
“So what? I don’t have terminal cancer. I’ve suffered from depression my
whole life, undiagnosed for a great deal of it. That’s not good enough?
I’ve taken medication, I’ve seen shrinks. I’ve turned to God even, can you
believe it? But I’m broken, you see, I can’t get away from it. That’s why I
needed your help. But we’re at an impasse now, aren’t we?”

“An impasse,” she parroted.

“I have all the tools. I have your magic system. The tanks and the tubes
and the hood. So if you decide to help me or not, I will be liberated. I
want to die the way I decide to die. I don’t want to slit my wrists or
shoot myself in the head.”

“Of course not.”

“You’re about compassion. Why do I have to have a physical disease to get
it? I don’t deserve help? I am diseased, I’m just never going to die of it,
so I have to suffer and suffer. Where’s my compassion? I want my end.”

“So let me clarify, Mr. Appel. And you tell me if I have anything wrong. I
will need to write up notes for Bill. And Sally.”

“Okay, sure, lets be on the same page.”

“You want to kill yourself.”

He sighed a yes. His impatience made her feel small, but she continued,
“But you want dignity. So you contacted the…Bill and Sally, and they told
you to buy tanks and all the other tools you need to peacefully fall
asleep, but you lied to them and told them you have cancer so you could get
our over-the-counter secret method. And once you got it, you said, Ha
Suckers! I fooled you! And you expected everyone involved to say, oh,
that’s okay, you can get away with it. Is that the truth Mr. Appel?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.”

“But that is essentially, the way it happened, correct?”

“Sally sent over a mini-version of herself, I see.”

“I’m not denying you’ve suffered, Mr. Appel. And I’m sorry that you have.
But you also lied to people that were trying to help you. You also didn’t
finish whatever amends you’ve promised to make. Maybe sending a letter or a
card to someone you haven’t spoken to in years and shrugging your shoulders
when they don’t answer is the very definition of the least you can do. I
should confiscate all the materials you’ve purchased.”

“You could, but that would be stealing. And I can just go and buy them all
again.” He was a petulant child with all the answers.

“You won’t apologize now will you? You won’t admit that how you went about
it, maybe the way you’ve gone about your whole life, is just wrong. You’re
taking no accountability, is that correct?”

“Hold on, Ray, was it? I’m feeling on trial here. This is what I was saying
about compassion.”

Petra asked for a pen and paper. Henrik asked why, but she insisted. He got
up and opened his bedroom door. She heard the opening of drawers, the tweak
of a lamp’s knob and saw the shadow of his body moving through the room.
Through the doorway she saw a made-up bed and centered on it were bundles
of yarn laid out like fireplace logs. Two fat needles crisscrossed and
impaled the mounds. On the floor, against the night table sat a helium kit,
clear plastic tubing lay across the top, hanging over the sides. What
celebratory and almost maternal items he had inside that little room where
he sleeps. There was a harmless little tank for a party he was going to use
to die and those knitting needles were long a favorite of desperate women
in the countryside in need of abortions. You could kill anyone with
anything, even with nothing, if you tried or not. He exited the bedroom
with a pad and a click-top pen shutting the door behind him. She wrote down
her mother’s number and her mother’s name and passed the note to him.

“How’d you get her number?”

“Finish your amends, Mr. Appel. Then do whatever you want.”

***

After a while, it got cold in the car, so Ray turned on the ignition. An
opera spooked him from the speakers. Lowering the volume, he fiddled with
Petra’s unfamiliar heating system, surprised to find no switch for seat
warmers. The headlights beamed into action, giving Licorice access to the
world outside the cabin of the car. The dog leapt up from her nested
blanket in the backseat. The light made the squirrels scatter. To get as
high and close to those climbing creatures, Licorice mounted Ray’s lap, her
front paws on the top of the steering wheel. She barked in warning and
attack as Ray stroked her belly. In the chaos of looking for safe shelter,
a squirrel nosed a stuck balloon out from between two branches. It hovered
near the tree, like the helium had slowly leaked out but there was still
enough inside to keep it afloat.

The front door to Petra’s father’s apartment opened and Ray saw her bundled
in her coat, the furry collar pushing her cheeks up high. She walked
towards the car. Ray held Licorice tighter. The dog’s heart beat like an
earthquake, like the organ was the size of her entire little body. Ray
couldn’t tell what Petra was feeling, but he felt like a puppy falling
asleep next to a ticking alarm clock.